The Church of Dead Girls (10 page)

“Leon could answer,” said Barry, feeling he should stand up for the one person smart enough not to attend.

“That's why we didn't want him here,” said Oscar.

“I'd hate to blow Leon,” said Harriet. She laughed and Aaron laughed with her.

Barry felt a wave of terror that Joany or Harriet would want to touch his penis with their mouths. He drank his screwdriver. He couldn't taste the vodka but he knew it was there. The flashlights made zigzagging patterns of light across the ground.

“Do people die because they deserve to die?” asked Jason.

“They die because they're old and sick,” said Harriet.

“They die because they're bored,” said Aaron.

The moon shone through the leaves of the oaks. Harriet had set six candles on either side of the boom box. Though the night seemed windless, the candle flames flickered as if to the music.

Aaron and Bob Jenks began discussing pauperization and the difference between relative and absolute pauperization. They had both had several drinks. Bob said that pauperization was now mostly confined to peripheral third-world countries.

Oscar Herbst said, “Let's fuck a pauper!”

“Hey,” said Shannon, “paupers are our people. Let's fuck a capitalist.”

“A dead capitalist,” said Jesse.

“I bet we can push over some of these stones,” said Oscar. He pushed at the obelisk but it didn't move.

“Don't!” said Barry.

“Hey,” said Oscar, “Little Pink doesn't want to upset the sleeping capitalists.”

“Yow, wow, wow!” howled Jesse.

“Be quiet,” said Harriet. “You want someone to call the police?”

“This stone's loose,” called Shannon from five yards away.

“That's a small one,” said Aaron indignantly. “Clearly that belonged to a poor person, one of the impoverished.”

Oscar began pushing at a larger stone belonging to Wilhelm Bockman, who had owned a knitting mill in Aurelius. “Come on,” said Oscar. Jesse and Shannon joined him. They rocked the stone back and forth. Barry covered his ears. He was sure something terrible would happen. The stone was about six feet high. Bob and Jason joined them; Joany pushed as well. The stone teetered, then fell backward with a thud.

“That fixes the fucker,” said Oscar.

“Who else?” asked Shannon.

“Let's push over the obelisk,” said his brother.

They began pushing it, but it wouldn't budge. Aaron helped. The obelisk soil wouldn't move.

“Come on, Little Pink,” said Aaron.

“No.”

“Do what I say.”

“I don't want to,” said Barry. He turned his back to the others but it made him feel too alone, so he turned around again.

“Fucking capitalists,” said Oscar. “Let's get more stones.”

In the next half hour, they pushed over ten tombstones. Barry stood by the obelisk, mostly by himself. He found some comfort from Jim Morrison's voice but the song scared him: When the music's over, turn out the light.

At one point Harriet joined him. “You're a sissy,” she said. There was a hint of kindness in her voice.

“I know it. I'm sorry.”

“Don't tell the police.” Her face was a pale circle in the darkness.

“I'd never do that.”

“You'll make a silly revolutionary, Little Pink.”

“I don't want to be a revolutionary,” he said.

After a while the others came back to the Peabody obelisk. Oscar threw himself on the ground and appeared to go to sleep. Shannon and Jesse drank beer. Aaron made several screwdrivers and handed them to Harriet, Jason, and Bob.

Barry reached for one.

“You don't get one,” said Aaron. “You've been bad.”

Oscar was lying on his stomach with his face in the grass. “Bad, bad, bad,” he said.

“Cancel my subscription to the resurrection,” sang Jim Morrison.

Aaron looked around, first in one direction, then another. “My mother's buried in here,” he said.

“The murdered lady,” said Bob Jenks.

“I think she's over there,” Aaron said. He began walking to his left. Harriet went after him. The others watched. Oscar jumped to his feet and followed. Shannon and Jesse went as well.

Barry was left by himself. He looked around, then ran after Jesse. “Wait up,” he called.

Janice McNeal's grave was in a recent part of Homeland; its tall rectangular stone still looked new. There were flowers on the grave and Barry wondered who had put them there. Aaron, Bob, and Shannon shone their flashlights on the stone.

“Should we knock it over?” asked Oscar.

“Don't even try,” said Aaron.

“What was she like?” asked Harriet.

Aaron didn't answer at first. Then he said, “She liked to get fucked.”

Nobody said anything.

“She liked to jack men off and see their jism shoot into the air.”

“She told you that?” asked Harriet.

“Other men told me,” said Aaron. “They thought I should know what my mother was like. I can sit in Bud's Tavern and some drunk will come up and say, ‘Your mother liked to jack me off.'”

A car passed on the street.

“Fuckers,” said Shannon. The beam from his flashlight danced on Janice's tombstone.

Aaron appeared to get angry. “You think there's something wrong with jacking somebody off? Maybe she liked it. She liked lots of stuff.”

“What do you think about her murder?” asked Barry. He didn't quite mean it that way. He wanted to know if Aaron suspected someone of having done it.

“What the hell do you think he thinks?” asked Jason.

“It seems to me,” said Oscar, “that Little Pink's been getting away with a lot tonight.”

“Shame on Little Pink,” said Shannon.

“He didn't help with the capitalist stones,” said Jesse.

“I think,” said Oscar, “that it would be honoring Janice McNeal's memory if we gave her Little Pink's pants.”

Shannon laughed. “Great,” he said.

“And underpants,” said Oscar.

Barry stepped back but was immediately grabbed and pushed to the ground. Shannon knelt on his shoulders as Oscar and Jesse began to work on his belt buckle. The others stood back, then Bob Jenks joined them as well.

Barry struggled. “No!” he cried, and Shannon put a hand over his mouth. They pulled off Barry's sneakers, then began tugging at his pants. As he twisted back and forth, he could see Aaron and Harriet standing above him, looking down at him. Harriet had a little smile. Aaron's face showed nothing at all.

When Barry's pants and underpants had been removed, Shannon and Jesse continued to hold him down. Oscar stood up and focused his flashlight on Barry's genitals.

“No wonder they call you Little Pink,” he said.

“Hey, Barry,” said Shannon, “when do you think it'll start growing?”

They continued to joke about his penis.

“Maybe it needs vitamins,” suggested Joany.

“Or Rapid-Gro,” said Bob.

Aaron didn't say anything. He looked at Barry, then looked away. Barry squeezed his eyes shut and wanted to disappear.

Oscar draped Barry's pants over Janice's tombstone.

“Oh dear departed one,” he said, “we place this tribute upon your tomb so you will know that you have our unending devotion.”

They shone the flashlights on the tombstone. Hanging down, the legs of Barry's jeans made an upside-down V bracketing Janice's name.

“Let's get out of here,” said Aaron. “I'm bored.”

Oscar grabbed the pants and ran off toward the street. Jesse followed and Shannon ran off as well. The others hurried after them. Barry stayed on the ground with his hands over his eyes. He realized he was lying above Janice's remains. He didn't move. The dark grew darker. A night bird called. After another moment, he could hear nothing at all.

Barry kept his hands over his eyes. “Little Pink,” he said out loud. “Little Pink.” In the silence, it was as if he were shouting. He no longer heard the others, but then a car rushed away squealing its tires. He still expected to be dragged down among the dead, but now he wanted it to happen.

But nothing happened. Barry lay there for nearly an hour, then he got too cold. He made his way to the street. They had taken his shoes as well. By his watch he saw it was three-thirty in the morning. He stepped on gravel and hurt his bare feet.

“Little Pink,” he said out loud.

Once he got to the street, he stood behind a tree. There were no cars and the houses were dark. It was a mile to where he lived. It was less to his mother's house, but he couldn't go there. Barry imagined walking across town without his pants. He was bound to be seen. He wanted to stay in the cemetery and never leave. He felt the dead were lucky.

Around four-thirty he heard a car. He hid behind the tree. The car pulled up in front of the fence and a door opened.

“Barry!”

It was Aaron.

Barry came out from behind the tree.

Aaron stood by the fence. He held Barry's pants. He looked at Barry, then tossed his pants to him.

“Get in the car,” he said.

A
aron was
ten years older than Sadie, surely too much to make them contemporaries, though I have friends ten years my junior or senior and I see them as contemporaries. But Sadie was thirteen. No one approved of their friendship and Sadie was warned against it. Just the fact that Aaron was interested in Sadie was taken as evidence that something was wrong. And that was another point: Why was Aaron interested in Sadie, why did he want to spend time with her? It is one of the complications of life that nothing is done for one reason. There may be many reasons, both conscious and unconscious. My favorite chair for reading is the one in which my mother used to read to me. Yet when I moved back to this house, I didn't realize it was the same chair, even though I probably sat in it for several hours each evening. It had been reupholstered from a dark brown fabric to a light blue fabric with yellow flowers. It wasn't even the most comfortable chair in the living room; the arms were lumpy and the seat sagged. Yet something led me to pick it out as my reading chair. Psychologically, it was the chair most comfortable for me. This is an example of an unconscious reason.

Aaron may have liked Sadie because she was uncorrupted and looked at the world with wonder. That certainly was one of my reasons for liking her: her vision was not yet jaded. Beyond that she was energetic and enthusiastic, courteous and pretty. And she had a sense of humor, a delight in the slightly peculiar that I found charming, such as the stories she made up about my fetal pig or the nearly hairless rat in its jar of formaldehyde, which she named Tooslow and for which she invented adventures where nothing turned out right.

Aaron must have had some other reasons too. Given his history, he was familiar with the dark side of human life. With Sadie there was no dark side, or perhaps she was pre-dark side. Even the idealism of the IIR, as foolish as it seemed, was based on the hope that the dark side could be erased from human experience by changing human institutions, though I'm sure this insight would have surprised some of its members. That idealism, however, was one of the reasons Aaron had joined, even if he had half a dozen others. Sadie's innocence attracted us both. On the other hand, I would never have done anything to put Sadie in danger, but that didn't seem entirely true of Aaron.

Ten days after the graveyard incident Aaron took Sadie to a flooded quarry several miles east of Aurelius to go swimming. It was private property and the sheriff's department patrolled it because over the years there had been three or four drownings. There was also old machinery either under water or poking up through the surface: contortions of rusted metal so deteriorated it was impossible to guess its original function. Franklin would have been upset had he known that Aaron was taking Sadie to such a dangerous place, but he knew nothing about it until later.

I gather that Sadie had been begging Aaron to take her all summer and so perhaps he wasn't one hundred percent guilty. On the other hand, he had told her about the quarry and had probably made it sound exciting. People went swimming in the quarry when I was a boy and even then it was known as dangerous. I never went myself for fear of making my mother angry.

Aaron parked his old Toyota under some trees about a mile away and they hiked across the cornfields and through a patch of woods to the quarry's edge. Sadie had made salami sandwiches and they had a six pack of Pepsi in a small cooler. It was mid-August and hot. A blue, cloudless day. Cicadas were whining. It hadn't rained for over a week and everything was dry. They left Aurelius around ten and reached the quarry an hour later. Sadie had wanted to bring her dog, Shadow, a black cocker spaniel who hated exercise, but Aaron told her to leave it behind.

The incident at Homeland Cemetery had drawn a lot of attention but no one was charged and the vandals remained unknown. There was an article in the
Independent
and Franklin had written an editorial about how the character of the present could be judged by its respect for the past. A dozen tombstones had been tipped over and one was cracked in half. Many beer cans had been found. It was assumed that high school students were responsible. No one seemed to suspect the IIR, though some people must have. A few months later and the IIR would be suspected of everything from stealing missing dogs to throwing trash on the streets. A local Boy Scout troop volunteered to clean up the graveyard and the police patrolled more carefully.

When Sadie mentioned the graveyard to Aaron, he admitted he had been there.

“Did you tip over tombstones?” asked Sadie.

“A couple. They were heavy.”

They had reached the quarry and were following a dirt path around the edge, a low bluff above the water. The pond was about a hundred and fifty yards across and had a ragged oval shape. Four boys were jumping into the water from a tree branch on the other side and a dog was barking.

“Weren't you scared of getting in trouble?”

“We didn't think about it. The dead don't care and the living weren't around.”

“Why'd you do it?”

“Boredom, I expect.”

They chose an open spot by the water where three logs made a triangle. A fire had once been built in the center, leaving a dark burned place. Beyond the logs a bluff rose up about twenty feet above the water. Sumac grew along the shore. Aaron and Sadie were directly across the quarry from the four boys, who were at the end of a dirt track where sheriff's deputies now and then appeared. The dog kept barking. One of the boys shied a stone at it but missed.

Aaron, who was often silent with others, was talkative with Sadie. I'm not sure he was really different with her, but he appeared less guarded, less ironic. He, too, had grown up in Aurelius and seemed a happy child. The change came in his teens. Superficially, it could be blamed on Hark Powers, but Hark simply represented the world. One could also blame Aaron's change on the arrival of puberty and an awareness of his mother's life. His father's life, too, for that matter.

Aaron would talk to Sadie about what he read—the history, philosophy, and social fiction that he had from Chihani—but also about growing up in Aurelius, delivering papers with his dog, and his own visits to the quarry when he was even younger than Sadie.

He mentioned leaving Aurelius. “Not right away. But I've been thinking I'd like to get a motorcycle and ride through southern Mexico—Chiapas and the Yucatán—where they've been trying to start that revolution.”

“What revolution?” asked Sadie. They had unpacked their lunch and were eating the sandwiches. Aaron had taken off his shirt and wore a pair of black swimming trunks that came halfway down his skinny thighs. He sat on the ground leaning against a boulder. Sadie sat on a log. She wore cutoff jeans over a green tank suit. She had long legs, much longer than her torso. On her knees were the traces of roller-skating scars from years before.

“Revolutions are about a redistribution of power,” said Aaron. “A guy has a stick and he uses it to whack the people around him, till someone takes it away. Then someone else has the stick for a while. And
he
whacks at the people around him. In southern Mexico it's the Indians against the landowners.”

“Does there always have to be a revolution?”

“Not necessarily. You want to get the stick from the guy who's whacking you—revolution's the last thing you try.”

“Could you do your work down there?”

“Wherever there's a phone line.”

“What do you do as an analyst? Do people tell you their problems?”

Aaron laughed. “I only analyze data. Dead things. Right now I'm analyzing the database of a hospital in New York to help them determine whether it would pay to expand their department of obstetrics and gynecology.”

Sadie wrinkled her nose. “That doesn't sound exciting.”

“You'd be surprised at how peaceful it is. Every bit of information finds its little home.”

“And what do you plan to do after the revolution?”

“Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary. At least that's what Marx said.” Aaron took a can of Pepsi from the cooler, opened it, and handed it to Sadie. “If a guy has a stick, he'll use it to whack people around him unless there are laws to stop him. He did it when people lived in caves and he'll do it when people travel in rockets.”

“He's a bully,” said Sadie.

“Everybody's got a bully in him someplace.” Aaron paused to wonder if that was true. “At least that's what I think.” He poked at his bare feet. They were big feet with long toes. He could pick up pebbles with them.

“Do I have a bully in me?” Sadie asked, teasing a little.

“Maybe. You have to get a stick first.”

“Did you bite Hark Powers because he was a bully?”

“I bit him because I was sick.”

“What about Sheila Murphy?”

“I was angry with her but I was sick then, too.”

“Were you angry with her because she wouldn't . . . you know?”

“I was angry because she wouldn't answer my questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Just questions.”

“Are you still sick?”

Aaron scratched the top of his head. “I'm not sure.”

Sadie started to ask something else, stopped, then asked, “What did his ear taste like?”

Aaron took a mouthful of Pepsi and rolled it around in his mouth. “Waxy,” he said, “like a waxy piece of salami. I wouldn't recommend it.”

“What does it mean to be sick?”

“It means doing something and knowing you shouldn't do it but doing it anyway.”

“Did you come back to Aurelius because you're sick?”

“No, I had clear reasons for coming back here.”

“To learn about revolution, to join the IIR?”

“I'd decided to come back before that.”

“Did you come back because of your mother?”

“Partly. I want to find out who killed her.”

Sadie lowered her voice. “Do you have any ideas?”

“It was one of her boyfriends and it's someone who's good at staying hidden. Maybe a priest, maybe a doctor, maybe a cop.”

“So you have people in mind?”

“Sure.” Aaron stood up. “Hey, aren't we going swimming?”

“What about Harriet?” asked Sadie, not quite finished with her questions.

Aaron stood ankle-deep in the water. “What about her?”

“Do you love her?”

“She's a friend,” he said. “And she's my soldier.”

“Do you have other girlfriends?”

“Lots.”

“Do you have sex with all of them?”

Aaron grinned, then his face grew serious. “Just about.” He dove in the water and swam out about twenty-five feet, then he turned and dog-paddled as he called to her, “Are you coming in?” He flicked his head to get his hair out of his eyes.

“Are there snakes?”

“You think they'll mess with you?”

Sadie dove in as well. Aaron swam with his head out of the water. Sadie swam as she had been taught on the swim team. Aaron tried to catch her but she was faster. He rolled over on his back and kicked his way back to shore. His body was very white, as if he hadn't taken off his shirt all summer. He was thin and his ribs stuck out. Sadie swam after him.

Aaron scrambled out of the water and began climbing the dirt path to the top of the bluff.

“Are you going to jump from there?” called Sadie.

“Why not?”

The bluff wasn't a perfect ninety degrees so Aaron had to run to clear the shore. His long hair fanned out behind him. He pulled up his knees as he fell and hit the water about ten feet out. A spray of water rose around him. Aaron swam to shore. When he got to the bluff again, Sadie was looking over the edge.

“It's scary,” she said. The drop seemed as high as a small house and there was the danger of not jumping out far enough.

“Only if you think about it.”

“Is it deep?”

“Deep enough.” Aaron moved back about twenty feet and ran. When he jumped, he spread out his arms and yelled. He hit the water and for about thirty seconds he didn't reappear. Then he popped up a few yards from where he had gone under the surface.

“Don't do it if you don't want to,” he called. He swam back to shore. Sadie was again looking down from the edge.

“It's a long way,” she said.

“That's what makes it fun,” said Aaron. “Just make sure you jump out far enough.” He climbed onto a boulder to watch.

She disappeared from sight and Aaron waited. Then she suddenly reappeared and flew into the air, white and slender. She shrieked and kept her body straight, descending feet first. She hit the water about eight feet from the shore.

When Sadie broke the surface again, Aaron saw from her face that something was wrong.

“I hit something,” she cried. “It hurts.”

Aaron jumped off the boulder, then waded into the water to get her. He lost his balance and went under, then spluttered to the surface. Sadie swam to shore. He grabbed her arm and they both scrambled up onto the bank. Sadie's left leg was bleeding.

“Something was down there,” she said. “I scraped it.” Her teeth were clenched.

Aaron bent down by her leg, trying to wipe away the blood to see the size of the cut. It kept bleeding. He cupped his hands into the water and washed her leg. The cut was a deep scrape from her knee up along her thigh.

“Can you stand up?”

“It hurts.”

Aaron took his towel, soaked it in the water, then wrapped it around Sadie's thigh. “I'll get you to a doctor.” He began putting on his shoes.

Half supporting her, he got Sadie across the fields to his car. She was light enough that he could have easily carried her.

Sadie didn't say anything. She was trying to concentrate on not crying. She kept pursing her lips. Aaron didn't say anything either. If he felt responsible, he didn't mention it.